In the short story “Interpreter of Maladies” by Jhumpa Lahiri, the narration gives us insight into the thoughts of Mr. Kapasi as he drives the Das family around in India. The narrator focuses on the negative aspects of the family and Mr. Kapasi clearly does not hold a very favorable view of the Americans, yet he becomes infatuated with Mrs. Das. Watching her through his rearview mirror, he is able to manipulate her character to fit his own story. First Mr. Kapasi looks down on her, and then when she shows him some admiration and attention, fetishizes her. When Mrs. Das confesses her deepest secret to Mr. Kapasi, he refuses to humanize her, reverting to his prior disdain and one dimensional attitude toward her.
Mr. Kapasi looks at Mrs. Das in the mirror the first time the narrator describes him watching her. The narrator mentions “her shaved, largely bare legs,” drawing our attention to her skin and demonstrating that even as Mr. Kapasi scorns her childrearing techniques, he is already sexually objectifying her (Lahiri 446). The mirror comes between a direct view of the woman, highlighting the fact that Mr. Kapasi is not seeing Mrs. Das completely and straight on. The mirror allows Mr. Kapasi to distort Mrs. Das to fit his own beliefs and expectations.
The mirror reappears when Mr. Kapasi begins to have erotic feelings towards Mrs. Das, the narrator remarking that “from time to time he glanced through the mirror at Mrs. Das” (Lahiri 452). The mirror creates a lens through which the male gaze can be enforced; readers only see Mrs. Das as Mr. Kapasi is seeing her in his rearview mirror. But now, rather than noticing her lackluster parenting skills, he looks at her breasts and her throat, but never seeing her as a whole. Mr. Kapasi only appreciates Mrs. Das because she compliments him and creates a foil for this disapproval of his own wife. He cannot appreciate Mrs. Das for the person she is, but recognizes her only in regards to how useful she is to him.
Mrs. Das proceeds to spill a secret to Mr. Kapasi; she cheated on her husband and their son Bobby was not actually Mr. Das’s. Mr. Kapasi now has evidence that her marriage is not a happy one, but his romantic hopes are shattered when she reminds him of their age difference, that he could be her father. Mr. Kapasi is reminded of reality and “the feeling he had had toward her, that made him check his reflection in the rearview mirror as they drove, evaporated a little” (Lahiri 458). The rearview mirror even let Mr. Kapasi distort himself and let himself think that he might be able to forge some sort of relationship with Mrs. Das.
Now that Mr. Kapasi can no longer fetishize Mrs. Das, he returns to a state of scorn towards her, “insulted that Mrs. Das should ask him to interpret her common, trivial little secret” (Lahiri 459). Even at what should be her most humanizing moment, when she reveals how deeply unhappy she is in her life and Mr. Kapasi feels no sympathy for her, proving that his infatuation was superficial and he never allowed her full personhood in his eyes. He recognizes that Mrs. Das “had already fallen out of love with life” and one might imagine, based on similar feelings of discontent that Mr. Kapasi revealed throughout the story, he might not revert immediately to finding her trivial (Lahiri 459). Mrs. Das expressed her vulnerability to Mr. Kapasi, and rather than attempting to alleviate her guilt or pain at no cost to himself, he lashes out at her because she insulted him by unconsciously rejecting his imagined advances.
By using the mirror as a distortion device and mechanism through which the male gaze can function through and by narration the story through Mr. Kapasi’s point of view, Lahiri created a dynamic female character who was objectified by the main character. Lahiri obviously demonstrates Mr. Kapasi’s negative views of American society, but her depiction of Mr. Kapasi’s sexism is more subtle. It takes the form of objectification, from simply dismissing Mrs. Das as vain and frivolous, to fetishizing her, and then returning to seeing her as trivial when she stops flattering him.
Works Cited
Lahiri, Jhumpa. “Interpreter of Maladies.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. Ed. Kelly J. Mays. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2016. 446-460. Print.
